In this study, the relation between mother's recollections of certain child behaviors and child-rearing techniques and parallel information obtained at an earlier time when the behaviors were current is investigated. Issues of maternal recall of children's early characteristics are of special relevance in etiological questions of psychopathology. Although previous research has demonstrated that in general the correspondence between contemporaneous and retrospective data is low, there is still much to be learned about what determines when mother's recollections are more or less accurate. (1) Are certain kinds of information recollected more accurately than others? (2) How does the mother's current view of the child color her memories? The subjects are mothers of 26-month-old children who are part of a study of etiology of behavior problems. The data sets that are compared are: (a) mother's observations and investigator ratings when the child was 18 months of age, and (b) mother's retrospective reports given 6 to 8 months later about the 18-month period.